In the workplace and classroom, a common task is the presentation of a sequence of media segments such as slides to an audience as part of a formal presentation. Commercially available software, such as Microsoft's PowerPoint®, provides an example of an application that enables users to present visual images stepping from one slide to another. Such applications provide users with an opportunity to teach, sell, give briefings and so forth with more substance and power than merely by speaking.
While these tools may be adequate for the presentation of a single, well-ordered, linear sequence of slides, it is frequently the case that users will want to access slides in a non-linear fashion in the course of a live presentation. For example, they may need to jump to an earlier slide in order to answer a question or quickly identify and present a slide from a source not included in the original presentation. These tasks are extremely cumbersome using the currently available direct manipulation and menu-based interface which results in an interruption in the presentation and loss of time.
In some systems, users can direct the basic navigation of slides in a presentation using an input device such as a remote controller, computer keyboard, or mouse, or physical objects incorporating mnemonics such as it taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,732,915. Voice-recognition systems may be used in order to direct the basic navigational commands of the slideshow, for example, “next slide please,” “please show the previous slide,” “please show slide five.” While the ability to direct the basic navigational commands of the slideshow using a voice recognition system offers an advantage over other methods in that it is more natural, previous voice recognition systems fail to provide control of the presentation beyond basic navigational commands within a linear series of media segments. Another problem occurs when voice recognition systems attempt to distinguish between the spoken portion of an oral presentation and verbal commands given by the orator to move to a different slide in the presentation. Displaying material that does not properly relate to the spoken portion of a presentation is embarrassing to the presenter, and distracting to the audience.
Further sources of disruption in a presentation setting are introduced if the presenter desires to access media segments not included in the originally prepared sequence. Current methods and systems allow the presenter to access such media only after closing the prepared presentation, finding the desired slide show, loading that slide show, and finding the desired slide within that slideshow which is an altogether awkward and time-consuming process. The World Wide Web is a rich source of information and numerous search engines have been constructed to quickly retrieve information in response to user queries. Some of these search engines support a natural language format for queries. Given the ambiguous nature of natural language, and the complexity involved, these systems have limited success, and typically return large numbers of irrelevant documents.
What is needed in the art is an improved method and system for controlling the content available to a presenter without interrupting the presentation as viewed by the audience.